Woman Finds Tooth Growing Inside Nose

Doctors in China found a tooth growing inside of a female patient's nose, stunning people worldwide.

The 57-year-old woman, known only as Xia, suffered from constant nosebleeds for decades before a scan revealed its shocking cause, reports the Daily Mail.

At first, doctors thought Xia had a severe case of rhinitis, an inflammation of the nose membrane.

However, upon closer examination they found a strange, solid object lodged up her nose.

"Scans showed a high-density shadow in her right nasal cavity," said Zhou Jianpo, an ear, nose and throat specialist. "We thought it was a foreign object or some sort of stone."

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But after taking Xia into surgery, they found a fully grown tooth -- with root and crown included -- inside her nasal cavity.

After pulling it out, the patient reportedly no longer suffered nosebleeds and said she felt much better.

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Zhou says the patient suffered from supernumerary teeth, a condition which causes an extra tooth or teeth to grow in random places on the face. Sufferers are usually born with the ailment and it's rare it develops later, as in this case.

It's not certain why some have this problem, but a US National Library of Medicine report says causes can include "trauma, infection, anatomical malformations, and genetic factors."

In addition to nosebleeds, symptoms can also include a blocked nose, headaches, foul-smelling mucus, and deformities of the nose.

While supernumerary teeth affect just a handful of people, it happens more often than one might think.

One 22-year-old man in Saudi Arabia also suffered nosebleeds resulting from supernumerary teeth.

In 2014, doctors found a white bony mass measuring half an inch growing inside of his nose. Upon removal, the patient no longer suffered symptoms.

Others have also struggled with the condition elsewhere on their bodies.

"When my daughter was 5yrs old, she fell and her front baby tooth was chipped," recalls one person in the Daily Mail's comment section. "I took her to the dentist and the x-rays showed an extra tooth growing between her two permanent teeth which hadn't come down yet. We had to take her to a specialist who removed her two front baby teeth and the extra tooth. That tooth looked like the horn from a unicorn, it was spiral. Really unusual."

"I suffered a tooth that grew in my jar bone," another added. "I was finally saved from rather nasty pain by a dentist in the back streets of Hull after others had refused me treatment."